


Guardian

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adrenaline, Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Ancient Roman Lubricant, Attempted Murder, Beards (Facial Hair), Because It's a Poppy fic, Centurion!John, Commissioned fic, Flirting, Hair-pulling, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Masturbation, More Oral Sex, Oral Sex, Paddling, Rough Kissing, Senator!Sherlock, Sherlock Makes Deductions, Smartass Banter to Finish, Spanking, Voyeurism, implied prostitution, more spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 08:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2381219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Ancient Rome, Centurion John is hired to act as personal, round-the-clock bodyguard for the mad emperor's hedonistic, philosopher brother (that would be Sherlock). Sparks fly, John peers through a partly-open door, arrows fly, and Sherlock learns the very apt name given to John's 22-inch sword.</p><p>No, his *actual* sword. He's a Roman solider, remember. What you were thinking would be. . .just, no.</p><p>Ancient Rome - AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guardian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kfree52](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kfree52/gifts).



This fic was commissioned by kfree52.

 

\---*----*----*---

 

“Of course this is ludicrous.”

“With respect, sire—“

“If you call me that again I’ll have you beheaded and send your head to your wife with orders that she carry it with her in a basket at all times for a week. No—a month!”

“Haven’t got a wife.”

The sable-haired senator’s face momentarily flashed something almost like self-doubt, but he recovered instantly. “Your mother, then.”

“No.” The centurion shook his head, pursed his lips hard. Regardless of his reputation for emotional outbursts never followed up with action, the senator was still the emperor’s brother, and could, in fact, have anyone who displeased him killed with a few words in the right ear.

With a dismissive wave of his hand, the senator circled back to his original point. “Regardless. Call me Sherlock.”

“As you like. If I may be so bold. . .” the centurion cleared his throat. “It’s quite an unusual name.”

“My mother is a Celt; the emperor’s name was Celtic, too, before he became Marcus Septimus Pompous-Ridiculous.” Sherlock rolled his eyes extravagantly. “And what am I to call you?”

“Ioannes,” the centurion answered. “ _John_.”

The senator’s small study was cluttered with all manner of writing implements, more books than John had seen in a single place, strange metal gadgets—one with dozens of glass lenses sticking out at odd angles. The chair behind his heaped-upon writing table was tall-backed and padded, here and there carelessly slit with pen-nibs or the slim blade used to break the seal on scrolls. The soft leather soles of Sherlock’s sandals whispered against the marble floor as he paced the room in a lazy, feline manner—as if John were prey he was not yet stalking, but certainly considering.

“My brother,” he asserted, “insists I be guarded around the clock. My life has been threatened.”

John nodded tightly, right hand resting gently on the grip of his sword hanging in its leather scabbard from his belt. “That’s what I’ve been told.”

Sherlock sniffed a bitter laugh through flaring nostrils. “And yet it is my brother who would have me killed.” He dragged long, pale fingers lightly across a stack of papyrus on the table top, caressing it as if with affection.

John quickly weighed up several possible responses, ranging from defense of the emperor’s honour in the face of his younger brother’s frankly treasonous accusation; to some expression of surprised dismay; to denial; to agreement. In the end, he decided it wisest to say nothing.

“And to have been assigned to protect me, you must be distinguished,” Sherlock ventured. “Yet, if you were battle-ready, you’d surely be off commanding a hundred men and swinging that sword of yours at Turks or Huns—not the Celts, for now—my mother would have Emperor Platypus over her knee.”

John almost laughed at the outrageous mental image of the emperor—a man over forty years of age—being paddled by his elderly, irate mother. He bit it back, flattened out the grin before it got away from him. Sherlock glanced at him then, and something expectant in his face gave John to know he was meant to appreciate the joke, though now it was too late to rearrange his expression to indicate that he had. A ripple of discomfited heat bloomed across his chest beneath his tunic and he thought he might be sweating.

Sherlock, who had been in lazy but constant motion since John’s arrival, planted his feet and squared his shoulders to John, standing rather closer than was strictly necessary or comfortable. He narrowed his strikingly pale, Celtic eyes. “So,” he continued, “you suffered an heroic wound sufficient to retire you from your front-line command. Possibly against your will: a man with neither wife nor mother hasn’t much of a home to come back to.”

John cleared his throat and a war broke out: twinkling eyes vs. respectful tone vs. potentially incendiary words. “I gather this is some guessing game you’ve devised as an amusing distraction from your utterly worry-free life,” he offered.

Sherlock tilted his head, reminding John of a bird trying to see what was in front of it with its poorly-placed eyes. “They’re not guesses,” he said haughtily. “They’re _deductions_. It’s a science, blending inference from facts in evidence with relevant general knowledge, eliminating the impossible until one arrives at the truth.”

John cocked an eyebrow.

“I’m developing a new Philosophy.”

John could barely repress his smile, bit hard on the inside of his upper lip to manage it. “That’s an ambitious undertaking.”

“I lecture thrice weekly.”

“Well, you’d have to.”

“I have a following.” The upward bow of Sherlock’s mouth set John at ease even as it sent another wave of heat across the skin of his chest.

“With respect, you _are_ the emperor’s brother. Not to mention. . .” His eyes widened meaningfully.

“Not to mention?” Sherlock prompted.

“Have you _seen_ yourself?”

Sherlock looked utterly baffled for rather longer than seemed natural, before recognition dawned and his skin, nearly as pale as the linen of his beautifully draped and gold-embroidered toga, went shell-pink from the base of his throat, up his neck and face right up to his hairline.

“Impertinent,” he said at last, sounding anything but outraged. His breathless tone, his scolding word, and the blush of his cheeks were staging a war of their own.

“Forgive me, sire—“

Sherlock quickly dragged a fingertip across his throat as a reminder.

“ _Sherloc_ k. Forgive me, but there was something about your. . .” John cleared his throat, then again. “I thought perhaps you were. . .” _flirting with me_ , John definitely was not going to say. “I apologise; I’ve misapprehended.”

Sherlock sank into the chair behind his writing table and violently shuffled scrolls and leather bound volumes and who-knew-what, seemingly at random. “You’re on the day shift, then.”

“Noon and night shift, as well.” John was more charmed by the senator’s fluster than was likely appropriate, given the nature and newness of their relationship. “Three more men will patrol the perimeter of the grounds after sundown. Otherwise, I’m your shadow.” He shifted his weight to the front of his feet. “ _Why_ would your brother want you killed?”

“My brother is mad as a latrine rat, as I’m sure you know. He appointed his horse praefect of the grain supply. But worse than being merely mad, he is paranoid, and a sadist. He considers me a threat to his throne, though I have made it abundantly clear I have no wish to occupy it. The lives of emperors are alarmingly short, and tend to end in an overly-exciting manner.” Sherlock’s colour had calmed back to its naturally creamy hue, except for the tips of his ears—still bright pink—just visible here and there between the dark curls of his hair.

“How would he do it,” John ventured, “D’you suppose?”

Sherlock sat back, considering. His posture relaxed as he sank into the problem, tented his bony fingers in front of his chin. “He’d want to plausibly deny involvement, so poisoning is probably out, nothing quiet or sneaky. I imagine he’d hire an assassin—not a lowlife, though, no gladiator or street-thief, for when would I encounter someone of that rank?”

John was tempted to put in that he’d heard more than one tale about the late-night company kept by the emperor’s sybaritic younger brother. Again, he elected to stay on the side of safety and keep quiet.

“No,” Sherlock went on, “He’d threaten to murder the daughters and rape the sons of some respectable-but-amoral citizen, unless the deed be done. _Publicly_ , of course—there must be a show, and witnesses.”

“Those lectures you’ve been giving,” John offered.

Sherlock’s face lit up, as if they were designing the plot of a stage-play, rather than puzzling out likely ways to murder him. “Indeed, that would be a _splendid_ place to end me! A dramatic crescendo in my oratory, a robed figure emerges with a knife. . . _OH!_ ” He leapt from his chair, launched himself at John, miming a stabbing. “Not a single figure, but a _crowd_ of them, half-a-dozen or more!” His hand rested on John’s neck, just above the top edge of his mail, and the other jabbed repeatedly at John’s torso: belly, then chest, belly again, John’s side. “An absolute _flurry_ of knives, the crowd gasping as one, some fainting, others shrieking as I am pierced! Run through! Slashed! Eviscerated!” He described a deep thrust to the center of John’s gut, a vicious upward twist, a grunt of effort as he pulled the invisible knife out from beneath John’s breast bone, held it aloft beside his head.

Sherlock was panting, his eyes alight, grinning boyishly. His upper lip was shining with perspiration. His hand still rested on John’s neck, and his thumb moved then, suddenly yet slowly, curling up along the side of John’s throat until it pressed his jaw the slightest bit upward, then slipped down again and came to rest on the knob of his clavicle, at the base of his throat. The arm he’d been using to mime the stabbing drifted down from where it hung in the air and John found that every bit of him was awaiting the touch of that long palm, those pale fingers, but to his disappointment, it never arrived. Sherlock’s smile faded and his eyes went half-closed as he leaned close to John’s ear. “I imagine I’d bleed to death before I hit the floor,” he finished, all the stagey hysteria gone from his voice, now just a smooth, low near-hum. “The assassins, per arrangement, would be captured and then sent away with heavy purses and orders to keep their mouths shut, or suffer the same fate.”

Impossibly near now, Sherlock’s moist breath stirring the hairs of John’s beard just in front of his ear. “But now I’ve got you, Ioannes,” Sherlock murmured. “So I suppose I’ll have nothing to fear. Certainly _you_ wouldn’t ever want to see me like that. . .Bloodied. . .And helpless.”

John swallowed hard. He had the distinct impression that the senator’s new science of deducing truth gave him to know that _bloodied and helpless_ was one of several ways John would absolutely _thrill_ to see him.

A breath, no more, and Sherlock spun away from him, moving toward the wide archway that lead to the entry hall. John harrumphed as if he could clear the blaze of lust from the pit of his belly as easily as he could clear a lump of frustration from his throat. As it became obvious Sherlock was on the move, John followed. “There’s a room you can have,” Sherlock said casually, with a vague wave ahead of him, “Across from my bedroom. If you have need of anything, there’s a bell beside the bed and any number of servants attuned to its chime.” Sherlock made a sharp turn through a half-open door—John could see a wide, low bed in a state of rumpled chaos; empty drinking vessels overturned on a long table behind it—and snapped, “I imagine I’ll dine with you this evening,” before shutting the door in John’s face.

*

John got the lay of the house, wrote a brief letter to his commander, and a servant did appear to collect it from him after he rang the bell beside his bed, which was narrow but not uncomfortable. Sherlock did not, as it turned out, dine with him, instead pulled a drape across the arch between the entry and his study, and remained inside it for a few hours, nearly silent but for the occasional shuffle of papyrus or put-upon sigh. The three guards arrived at sundown as promised. Two of them John knew, and after examining an introductory letter and quizzing gruffly about military experience, he was sufficiently convinced of the third’s legitimacy and set them to rounds outdoors while he stood watch at the senator’s bedroom door. At midnight, one of the other guards would relieve John so he could sleep.

The corridor was lit with candles set in nooks along the stone wall every few feet; John stayed alert to every noise in the house but distracted his brain from creeping boredom by designing battle plans he would never get to use, for a siege of Hibernia. Endlessly it seemed the only muffled sounds were of the senator moving about inside his bedchamber; John assumed he was readying himself for sleep. All at once, though, he heard Sherlock talking, mildly laughing, and another voice—male, less deep than Sherlock’s, thick staccato accent that sounded to John more street-tough than cultured. Alarmed, John pressed open the door partially, and from his vantage point could view about two-thirds of the room.

 Sure enough, Sherlock had company, but was smiling, at ease, offering wine from a bronze carafe. His companion was stocky, bearded, wearing a simple, drab toga and shabby sandals indicative of low standing. John had heard plenty of rumours about the senator’s penchant for keeping company with questionable characters for the sake of his own amusement and pleasure, and—surely—the annoyance of his brother. Clearly the man had come in through the exterior entrance, opposite, in which case the guards outside would already have checked that he carried no weapons and verified with the senator that he was expected. John exhaled.

He was about to pull the door shut, when Sherlock reached his right hand to his left shoulder and unfastened the gold clasp there that held his toga in place, easing loose the fabric so it hung down from his belt, baring his pale, muscular chest. Wordlessly, he dropped to his knees in front of the stranger, pushing the ragged toga up on thick thighs, and the stranger twisted fingers in Sherlock’s hair, yanked his head this way and that. Sherlock’s mouth fell open and he groaned as if with relief.

John’s lips slid apart and his heartbeat pounded in his temple, his throat, his thumb, his groin. He looked at the floor and at his own feet, then back again—despite himself—into Sherlock’s bedroom.

Sherlock’s mouth was stretched comfortably around the stranger’s prick now, his hand circling its base, stroking in time. His eyes were closed and John could just hear Sherlock’s deep, low humming blend musically with the gruff, uneven breathing of the stranger who even now had his hands tangled in Sherlock’s hair, tugging and shoving. Then John noticed—of all things—Sherlock’s long, narrow feet, which were flexed, his toes curled against the floor. The stranger released Sherlock’s hair long enough to slap his cheek, which broke Sherlock’s rhythm and made him moan with pleasure before returning in earnest to his work.

John was in agony; beneath his tunic his cock was thrumming with heat, thick with need. Of course he should not be watching; of course he could pull the door closed and mind himself. But the beautiful curves of the senator’s straining calf-muscles were themselves as crazymaking to John as was watching him give pleasure to another man with his lush, pink mouth. John’s knuckles were white where he clutched the grip of his sword.

The stranger was huffing hard breaths now, muttering encouragements, and Sherlock hummed affirmation around him, shifted the grip of his long fingers, his cheeks sunken with the effort. All at once the stranger gave a great shout and his pelvis jerked; Sherlock’s head fell back and the stranger spent himself across the high-pink of Sherlock’s lips, the tip of the cunning, darting tongue. John shuddered and closed his eyes, then remembered himself, glanced left and right along the corridor to be sure he was alone. He turned away from the door, leaned his back flat against the wall and let his head tip back. His cock ached and he tried to clear the images from his mind: the senator’s tightly budded, rose-pink nipples; the prettily flexed arches of his feet; his closed eyes and caved-in cheeks; the cream-coloured, honey-thick fluid decorating the swell of his lower lip. John thought again of Hibernia, of an armada, of mud and exhaustion and the thrilling fear of battle. It did not quell his desire. For what rose up in John’s mind’s eye then was an image of Sherlock’s pale torso pinned beneath him, those sinewy calves riding John’s shoulders, the long toes sliding between his lips, between his teeth, so that John could bite down until he felt the resistant bones. . .

A thudding, fleshy _smack_ , and the senator’s rumbling voice gasping out a cry of “ _Oh!_ ” John whirled back to the partly-open door, dominant left hand to his sword-grip now, ready to draw. He sucked in breath to speak but swallowed it when he saw that the senator was not being attacked at all, but rather was knelt over the end of his low bed, toga bunched up around his waist, facedown in the bedclothes, and the stranger was walloping his backside with a sturdy wooden board, holes bored through it to eliminate resistance. **_smack_** _-Oh!. . . **smack** -YES!. . . **smack** -Aaahh. . ._

John stared, drew himself mostly out of view behind the door, tilted his head so he could continue to watch. Three more heavy blows and the senator’s pale buttocks were streaked with angry, red welts. The stranger let the wooden paddle rest limply at his side, panted his exertion, then tossed the implement onto the bed and delivered a last blow with his bare hand. Sherlock’s body jumped forward and he collapsed on his belly on the bed with a moan. He spoke into the bedclothes.

“Favour yourself on the way out,” he commanded, though he was breathless, dreamy-voiced, as if mesmerised or nearing sleep. “But don’t be greedy,” he added, in a tone more like the one John had heard earlier: edged with disapproval, scolding. As John watched, the stranger dipped his hand into a golden bowl on a table near the garden door—was it full of _pearls_?—and fished out a prize, which he pocketed. Without a word, he was gone back into the night. Sherlock sighed gustily against the bedding, and an elegant, long-fingered hand disappeared beneath his belly, slid lower, and his hips rolled, and his thoroughly abused backside undulated, and he let out a long, loud groan which started a rush in John’s ears—his head was buzzing, he felt crazed, desperate for relief—and John glanced again down the corridor before sliding his hand low, thrusting his swollen cock against it through the rough fabric of his tunic. His eyes fell closed.

All at once, Sherlock’s voice rumbled out, “In the morning I shall write to your commander, Ioannes, to praise you for _watching_ me so attentively.”

John gasped—shocked. . . _thrilled_ —stumbled back against the corridor wall, stroked himself urgently, and it was only a few seconds before he was finished, mouth clamped shut, whimpering against his pursed lips. He struggled to calm his breath, face burning, perspiration running from his temples to dissipate into his beard. The bedroom door clicked shut beside him.

*

Late the next morning, and the senator was to present a lecture about his new Philosophy, his “science of deduction.” As attendees entered the villa’s central courtyard, John sized up each man as a potential threat. Sherlock for his part was either cocky, unperturbed, or oblivious—perhaps some combination of the three—and greeted each one, inquired after wives and horses, accepted compliments and clapped the backs of shoulders. He had risen late, leaving John to bide his time on guard in the corridor most of the morning, mentally sacking Germania. Once the senator emerged from his chamber, they carried on as if the previous evening’s spectacle had been neither participated in nor witnessed, though John noticed Sherlock did, in fact, press a letter into the hand of a servant, on the way out of his room.

Sherlock took his place in the center of the courtyard, and spectators settled on benches and low stone steps. Sherlock’s disciples were men of every age numbering about four dozen, from bare-faced boys to ancient, white-bearded men reliant on walking sticks. John surveyed each in turn, standing near the wide entrance to the courtyard, back to a pillar. None warranted suspicion, yet John narrowed his eyes and began a slow scan left to right around the place, then back again, as Sherlock began to speak.

“Seeing without a true _observation_ of the thing at which we gaze provides us but a sliver of truth; we must connect present input with knowledge already _in cerebro_ , recognize patterns—as well as those details which fall outside of a pattern. . .”

One man looked sidelong at those others near him, slid his hand beneath his tunic just above his belt. John’s shoulders tensed, and his left hand twitched in anticipation of reaching across for his sword. He narrowed his eyes.

“One begins with the entirety of a scene—or an object, or a man. . .” Sherlock’s lip twisted. “Or a woman. . .” Scattered, low laughter from his rapt audience,  “. . .and by measures one eliminates those details which are of no consequence, reducing the facts in evidence to only those which are both remarkable and informative. . .”

The man withdrew from inside his toga nothing more interesting than a wineskin, from which he took a long draught, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing his cheek purple. John exhaled.

“As we are ever in search of the truth, sentiment—that insidious distraction, which muddles the mind in favour of baser instincts and weakness of intellect—is _never_ an advantage.”

All at once, a whistling break in the air, and a clattering _thwack_ against the marble floor, perhaps two yards from where Sherlock stood, a bit farther from John’s post. Before anyone had registered the sound, or the object—let alone the _intention_ —John was at a dead run toward Sherlock, arm extended to shove the senator’s long, narrow body to the ground.

“Sire, get down!” he shouted, and his voice and sudden motion set off a pandemonium of yelling and running and wide-eyed faces staring around for the source of the threat. John lurched at Sherlock, pinned him hard to the floor beneath his own ropily muscled frame, lying across his back, wrapping his arm around Sherlock’s head and letting the shield that hung from his back cover them both. Three more arrows in rapid succession: one stuck in the dirt at the base of a potted lemon tree, the other two shattered against the floor. The spectators scattered, into the house or out to the street.

Sherlock seemed some combination of annoyed and amused. “This is quite dramatic,” he panted, head turned so that he could nearly see John’s face out the corner of his eye, “But a bit haphazard. I’d really hoped for close combat.”

John shifted his body as two more arrows landed, one ricocheting wildly off the base of a pillar, the other whizzing low along the floor and through a wide archway into the house, where John heard it sliding along the marble for quite a long way until at last it was stopped by a wall or closed door. He raised his head enough to try to gauge where the assassin was firing from.

“He must be in a tree,” John muttered. “We’ve got to get you inside.”

Two more arrows shattered spectacularly against the gleaming black-veined marble of the floor, one near enough that John felt splinters rain down on his exposed forearm.

“He’s in the cypress, south corner,” Sherlock intoned. “He’s alone. His left eye is myopic and clearly he did not come first in his marksmanship class. More likely a brigand than an infantryman.”

John grunted. “Just your type, then, a criminal.”

“Anyone’s my type if he’s not an idiot,” Sherlock commented.

Three more arrows, and these were much nearer to their mark. The first smashed down hard within a foot of their heads, then snapped in two before skittering off to their right. The next passed so close to John’s arm it left a streak of bare skin where it rubbed away the hair. The third succeeded in nicking his neck, just beneath his jaw, before its metal-razor head grazed Sherlock’s face, opening the narrowest slit in the skin of his cheekbone.

John muttered, “How—?“

“Eleven.” Sherlock answered the question John had only barely formed in his mind. “Military issue, so he’s got four more.”

“We’re going to get up, and you’re going to duck and run,” John ordered. There came the sharp, loud _pang!_ of an arrowhead striking John’s shield, and he felt it shiver against his back. “Ahead and to the right; through that archway; straight to your bedroom. Are you able?”

As well as he could with John’s stocky body weighing him down, Sherlock rolled his shoulders, arched his back, shifted his hips. “Every bit’s in order,” he replied. John wanted to smash the grin off his face. Did he not understand someone was attempting—right at this moment—to assassinate him?

Another arrow shattered on the floor an arm’s length from where they lay. “Up now,” John commanded, and placed his palms flat on the floor at either side of Sherlock’s upper arms. He pressed himself up; another arrow clanged against his shield, though it must have been quite close to the edge, as John felt as if he’d been struck with a hot poker against his right shoulder blade. He let out a grunt, but continued his upward motion, placed one foot on the floor, half-knelt. Sherlock shadowed the movement, coming to hands and knees, then curling his feet beneath him like a sprinter about to take off. “Now,” John urged. “With me. Go.”

Sherlock and John both unfurled upward but stayed hunched over with sunken chests and rounded shoulders, and John kept as close to Sherlock’s back as he could. They ran. Two more arrows in quick succession, one wildly off course but the other so close their feet were nearly tangled up in it. John vaguely registered some shouting outside the villa’s exterior walls, from the archer’s direction: the fiend would be arrested, the _cohortes urbanae_ arriving just in time to find a half-blind assassin with an empty quiver hanging from his back. Roman efficiency.

John shoved Sherlock forward with a strong hand against the taut, flat muscle of his lower back—not that he needed much encouragement—and in moments, they were inside Sherlock’s room, John moving with quick, studied movements to lock the door behind them, then to shutter windows and lock the exterior door. He yanked the draperies so only slim vertical slits were available for him to peer out of.

“The _vigiles_ caught him,” Sherlock assured. “He was alone.”

“Regardless,” John said tersely. His body thrummed with adrenaline: he saw every colour variation in the wall tile; he could hear his hair growing. “You do realise he was trying to kill you.”

Sherlock’s eyes sparkled wildly. He was grinning, but his breath heaved so that his shoulders moved along with his rapidly rising and falling chest. He waved his hand casually. “Killing me. What a bore. He was making a good show of it, though. Earned his money.”

John, sufficiently sure the room was secure, stepped in front of Sherlock, whose pulse throbbed in his throat so hard John could count his heartbeats.

“You’re cut,” John said, his own heartbeat refusing to settle. He drew in a breath and tried to hold it, to calm himself. He reached out a steady hand toward Sherlock’s face, flicked one fingertip against the thin stream of blood rippling down from Sherlock’s cheekbone.

Sherlock didn’t flinch. “It’s nothing,” he said. His eyes were rainwashed pale-blue and wide open, looking for danger. He lifted long fingers toward John’s throat, stroked upward, catching a rivulet of John’s blood onto the tip of his middle finger, then sank his first two fingers into the thicket of John’s beard and stroked down. John’s breath caught as feather-light fingertips slipped soft as water down the side of his throat.

“What did you do, Ioannes,” Sherlock asked, nearly whispering, “After you were injured? Once you were sure you’d survived?”

John’s mouth curled slightly, shifting his whiskers, drawing Sherlock’s attention to his lips. John’s tongue slipped out, shifted right to left, and he said, “First I killed a dozen Turks.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows rose.

“Then I got drunk.”

Sherlock nodded ever-so-slightly.

“Then I spent several hours in the company of an impossibly beautiful man.”

“Oh?” Sherlock’s tone was dismissive but his lips parted and didn’t close. The intensity of his inquisitive gaze magnified.

“Mm,” John hummed, and shifted forward just a bit, catching Sherlock’s wrist in his hand as he closed the space between them. “What better way to celebrate being alive? He had dark hair, like you.”

John closed his fist around Sherlock’s wrist, pressing the edge of the gold cuff he wore hard into the tender skin there, digging in his fingertips to make a mark.

“Clean-shaven, smooth face,” John near-whispered. “Like you.”

Sherlock’s breath sparked out between his parted lips.

“His mouth was thin, though,” John said quietly, and his thumb landed at the corner of Sherlock’s lush lower lip, began a slow drag toward the center. “Not like yours. Not like this pretty, plump little mouth.” He pushed his thumb between Sherlock’s lips, intruding, possessive, and Sherlock’s tongue found it, circled it, and his lips tightened, and he sucked. John stepped closer. He glanced down between them, the pale chest above the embroidered edge of Sherlock’s toga was flushing faintly pink.

Sherlock released John’s thumb, pushed it out with the tip of his tongue.

“Your sword. . .” Sherlock’s eyes drifted down to the grip of John’s sword.  “Does it have a name?”

John grinned with half his mouth, trailed his thumb damp with Sherlock’s saliva down Sherlock’s neck and grasped the clasp of his toga at his shoulder. His eyes followed his hand as he said evenly, “It’s called, _Take Off Your Clothes_.” His left hand reached across between them to rest on the sword’s grip, and his right hand tugged away the clasp at Sherlock’s shoulder and flung it to the floor so that the fabric of the toga slipped away down his arm and back. “It’s called, _Get On Your Knees, Pretty Thing_.” Sherlock nuzzled his nose into John’s beard then, moved his mouth against the thick, gold-blonde whiskers, inhaled hard. John yanked at the fabric of Sherlock’s toga until it fell to the floor in a puddle at their feet. “It’s called, _Suck Me Like A Good Boy And I’ll Smack Your Ass With It Afterward_.”

Sherlock’s fingers curled around John’s, worked both their hands up and down the grip of the sword a few times, the shape of things to come, still burrowing his face deeply into the hair on John’s cheeks and chin, huffing panting breaths. John turned his head a bit, twined his fingers in Sherlock’s thick waves of dark hair, and aimed Sherlock’s mouth toward his, kissed him hard with clashing teeth and jutting tongues, wide open mouths gasping hard against each other, alive, _alive_. . .

The room was now thick with the weighty scent of men fresh from battle, the tang of evaporating fear-sweat, the base note of mutual, primal desire. John tugged hard at Sherlock’s hair, bending back his neck until Sherlock surrendered and started to fold down to his knees. John glanced down along the pale length of Sherlock’s nude body—taut chest, quivering belly, cock flushed dark pink and straining out and up, wiry patch of dark hair at its base—and he moaned out, “Pretty, pretty thing. . .open your mouth,” as he urged Sherlock downward by a hand tangled in his hair.

Sherlock sat back on his heels, eyes closing slowly as a cat’s. His face was flush with pleasure at being handled roughly, with urgency, as if he were not the pampered brother of the emperor, not an esteemed philosopher, but merely a thing to be used. His petal-pink tongue slid out, glistening between his plush lips, and slowly circled. John jerked his wrist three times in quick succession, and Sherlock’s head followed the pull of his hair, and Sherlock whined and reached for John’s forearm, steadying but not pulling away. John untangled his fingers a bit, stroked them through Sherlock’s tousled curls, gripped hard in a new spot. Sherlock’s eyes came half-open; he looked drunk.

“ _Open your mouth_ ,” John repeated, a shout-whisper as he urged Sherlock closer to him.

Pale, bony hands slid up the fronts of John’s well-muscled thighs, gathered the fabric of his tunic and the bronze-studded leather straps that hung from his belt, pushed upward toward John’s waist, exposing the thick weight of his cock. Sherlock’s tongue flicked quickly at the corners of his mouth, and he grasped the root of John’s prick, and—at last— _opened his mouth_.

John shuddered out a gasp as Sherlock’s widely-flattened tongue rolled beneath the head of his cock, from one side to the other and back again, and then there was that positively _obscene_ lower lip, cradling the crown as his tongue-tip flitted up and down along the slit.

“I’ve seen what you can do,” John breathed. “Make it good, and I promise I’ll punish you thoroughly.”

Sherlock moaned at this. The warm rush of his breath along John’s shaft made him buck forward and Sherlock’s mouth stretched to accommodate him, wet swirling tongue and gentle suction as he braced himself with one palm on John’s thigh and the other forearm across his pelvis, holding his clothing out of the way, steadying them both.

John’s grip tightened in Sherlock’s hair and he rocked his hips, thrusting into Sherlock’s mouth, and Sherlock hummed his pleasure, encouragement, so John pushed faster, harder, grunting quietly as his cock surged forward between those welcoming lips.

“Mm, good boy,” John muttered. “Good _boy_. You’ll earn yourself a hell of a beating.”

Sherlock groaned around him, a thick vibration John felt all the way to the small of his back. Loosening his grip in Sherlock’s curls, John ran his fingers downward to the hairline at the back of the gently flexing neck, and sucked his teeth, and let his eyes close. Sherlock hummed, sucked hard, released, exhaled heat, inhaled cool, rolled his tongue in a lazy S along the underside of John’s cock. John petted Sherlock again, slowly, letting the waves of hair guide the path his fingers took, digging in a bit at the back of Sherlock’s neck _. Sliding forward. Pulling back. Sucking hard._ John’s voice caught in his throat and his eyes flew open.

“ _Huh—_!“ John huffed. He yanked at the hair on the back of Sherlock’s head, stepped back from him as his cock slid free of the now heavily-reddened mouth. A questioning look from the man on his knees, and he dragged the tip of his forefinger along the crease of muscle down John’s thigh.

Another half-step backward, and John’s clothes fell into place, though his arousal was as plain as ever under the drape of his tunic. Left hand crossing his body, he gripped his sword and drew it from its scabbard. Sherlock’s eyes went impossibly wide and the sound he made was as a starving beggar being shown a luscious feast, face full of hunger and hopefulness. John jutted his chin, indicating the foot of Sherlock’s bed, and Sherlock scrambled to it on hands and bare knees. The shameless way he rolled his hips, ass in the air, face in the blankets muffling a low, needy growl made John fear he might spend himself then and there. There were purpling bruises here and there on Sherlock’s buttocks, evidence of the strong hand of the previous night’s visitor.

“It does have a name, of course,” John said in a low voice as plain as he could muster given the tableau in front of him, of Sherlock’s parted knees on the floor; long feet flexed and toes curled beneath; the slope of his back; his face nuzzling into the bedclothes; the pale, recently-abused split-mound of his ass shifting, rocking, waiting for John to swing. John cleared his throat, stepped into position. “It’s called, _The Scold_.”

Sherlock’s half-laugh at the delicious irony dissolved into a wanton whine.

The _gladius_ was a well-polished steel blade just shy of two feet long, as wide as the palm of a man’s hand, double-edged, razor tipped. Its handle was of bronze and ivory, and John’s name was etched into the blade near the hilt. John was expert with it, could have wielded it with his eyes closed (he had never once closed his eyes in battle, even when he was staring straight into the face of Death herself). He slapped it lightly against his palm, testing the flat of the blade. It was cool, smooth, and although the motion he was about to undertake with his weapon was new, John knew his aim would be as true as ever it had been, stabbing and slashing his way through an enemy horde.

“Be still,” John intoned, and Sherlock instantly froze in place—even held his breath.

The sound of the blade smacking Sherlock’s flesh was crisp, sweet, stinging both their ears. John swatted him four times, each blow falling just below the previous one. Sherlock’s buttocks flushed red as the blood rushed beneath the skin, and John could see the variant shades, darkest where the first blow landed, fading to the paler pink of the last.

Sherlock whinnied, reached for his cock, slicked it with the drizzle of fluid already rushing from the slit, and began to pull, quiet moans punctuating each motion. His pelvis rocked back and stayed, presenting himself.

Drawing a great breath, John’s hand reared back and this time he swung in wide arcs, each blow landing adjacent to the previous one so that the red lines left by the blade-edges overlapped precisely, doubling their intensity. The fourth strike overlapped the first— _one, two, three_ , and again, _one, two, three_ —and now Sherlock’s backside was flushed dark red and he shouted as each of the last few smacks found its mark.

John was sure he would come in his clothes if Sherlock made even _one more_ sound.

“Hush, now,” he ordered. He slid the sword onto the bed beside Sherlock, parallel to his long torso, the knob of its grip resting beside Sherlock’s hip. Quick as he could manage, John undressed: his heavy belt and scabbard clattered to the floor, shortly followed by the mail he wore to cover his torso, and finally, the orange-red tunic. Sherlock strained his neck to look back at John as he removed his clothes, and he hummed delirious approval as John’s muscular, battle-scarred body was revealed.

Crouching on the edge of the bed, John leaned to swipe his tongue in warm swirls over the reddened skin of Sherlock’s buttocks. Sherlock whimpered into his bedclothes, and the rhythm of his hand stroking his dripping cock slowed to a lazy slide.

John’s tongue wended its way across and around Sherlock’s ass for a few moments more, and then he began to urge Sherlock into a more pleasing arrangement on the bed, rolling him away from where he’d set his sword, onto his back, and hefted Sherlock’s legs across his bare chest and up onto his right shoulder. Without even being prompted, Sherlock crossed his ankles and John flicked a trail of licks along the edge of one long, pretty foot. He looked down into Sherlock’s face to find his cheeks and neck flushed deeply pink, his eyes half-closed and dreamy as if he were intoxicated, the tendrils of hair at his temples sweat-damp and clinging to the skin.

“Yes. . .” Sherlock slurred, “Please yes.”

“Hmm,” was the only reply John could manage, then, “Shh. The sounds you make are going to finish me.”

Sherlock let out a high-pitched, stagey moan, then looked hard at John, challenging.

“Ye _ss_ , ye _sss_ , plea _sss_ e,” he hiss-whispered.

“ _Ioannesss_. . .

“plea _sss_ e, plea _sss_ e. . .

“ _yesss pleassse_. . .”

John rocked his hips forward, his cock urgent between Sherlock’s squeezed-together thighs. A quick glance at the table beside the head of the bed revealed several small, stoppered jars arranged on a gold tray. “What have you got for me, there, you clever thing?” John husked out, and Sherlock’s mouth curled into a knowing smile. He reached without looking, fingers wrapped around the neck of a glass bottle, pale blue. He flicked the cork out of its neck with his thumb and it rolled away along the marble floor. Sherlock tipped the bottle, an inch or two above his own thrumming erection, and a woody-smelling, pale golden oil drizzled out. He offered the bottle and John wasted no time getting his cock and Sherlock’s thighs slippery, sliding his flattened fingers into the tight non-space between. He didn’t even pause for breath before sliding himself gratefully into that slick heat, and he wrapped his arm around Sherlock’s legs, pulled them tight against his chest. He thrust forward with quick, hard jabs of his hips.

Sherlock’s pale hand went again to his own prick, matching John’s pace, and every now and then the bed sheets or John’s knee grazed the over-sensitized skin of Sherlock’s buttocks and he yelped, or whined, or groaned, and John was convinced he’d die of it. Their pace quickened, breathing loud and gusty, and now their moans echoed off the cool marble floors and pillars of Sherlock’s bedroom, and the sun had shifted so it shone through the slits in the drapes and made them both glisten with perspiration.

 Sherlock was close now, cock positively streaming with fluid that coated his fingers and palm as he stroked himself, and John watched him intently—biting his plump, high-pink lip, squinting his closed eyes, grimacing as if in pain—and rutted between the backs of the long thighs, his own cock surging with desperate need. Sherlock began to moan in time with their movements— _oh. . .oh. . .ohhh. . .ohhh. . .OHHH yesss OHHH YESSS!_ —and it immediately and utterly did John in. He pressed forward hard between Sherlock’s tight-squeezing thighs, and his cock pulsed, and he shouted, and Sherlock let his legs fall open and a second wave of John’s cum spurted onto Sherlock’s hand, his dark pink prick, his tightening balls, and Sherlock sucked air and threw his head back and groaned out his orgasm in a rumble so deep John felt it resonate in his own chest.

John collapsed onto the bed beside Sherlock, mindful of the location of his sword still on the mattress, and they both heaved until their breathing settled. John could feel the terror-pricked adrenaline draining away as a soft cloud of endorphins rushed in to take its place, could not—if asked—have described the exact location of his limbs. He rolled his head toward the closed-eyed face of the man beside him.

Sherlock licked his lips, rested his sticky hand atop the concavity of his belly. He opened his eyes, glanced sideways toward John.

“My brother really should try _harder_ to have me murdered,” he offered, and his plush, pink lips quirked up at the corners.

John nodded, fighting the urge to slip away into sleep. “More often, as well,” he agreed, and his eyes fell heavily closed.

 

-END-

**Author's Note:**

> @FicAuthorPoppy  
> fuckyeahfightlock.tumblr


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